The Pinky Swear

Based off this writing prompt:

          As a kid, you told one of the people in your class that you’d owe them one favor, for ANYTHING, if they traded you their tater tots for your carrots. They agreed, and you sealed it with a pinky swear.  You completely forgot about that kid until now, twenty years later, where they’ve called in that favor. You can’t say no. You PINKY swore on it.

 The Pinky Swear

          In middle school, pinky swears were sacred.

          It all started when Jay broke his pinky swear to Eric and the next day his bike hit a rock, sending him tumbling over his handlebars to break his arm.

          Aconite Turnblatt, wearing a smugly superior expression and adopting an air of mystery, told everyone it was karma; a word she had learned from her new-age, hippie parents.

          After that, no one dared enter into a pinky swear unless they intended to keep it.

          It became a way to determine your true friends: if they wouldn’t pinky swear with you, did you even know who they were?

          Tribes were formed.  Friendships forged and broken.

          Alan Caruso became a sort of bookkeeper, recording all the pinky swears in a Nike trapper keeper that said “Just Do It” across the front.  He would reign over the central table in the lunch hall, the seats beside him left empty, keeper open and waiting, as kids approached to account for their latest swears.

          And when the swears became more ridiculous, more difficult to keep, it was Alan who came up with a penalty system.

          If you broke a swear, and didn’t want to face the universe’s consequences, you could pay it off.  At first, this meant the offended party getting a free shot at the swear breaker. But when too many kids started showing up at the nurse’s office with bloody noses and bruises they refused to explain, the system was forced to change, lest the grown-ups cotton on and put a stop to it.  

          The new system involved a simple fine (the amount determined by Alan, who was really starting to enjoy the sway he held over these proceedings, and could usually be bribed into less or more damaging penalties, depending on who had greased his palm sufficiently) but, given that no one really had much money to speak of, more often it involved some kind of trade.  Janice broke a swear to Eileen?  Eileen gets to keep Janice’s Hello Kitty pencil case.  

          Inevitably, certain kids started manipulating the system to get what they wanted; forcing more vulnerable kids to enter into pinky swears they couldn’t help but break.

          It all came to a head when Rocko demanded that Jordan hand over his Game Boy.  Alan, sporting a new pair of Nike sneakers which were identical to the ones Rocko had been showing off just that morning, agreed that this was a fair penalty. Reluctantly, Jordan gave up his Game Boy before running to tell his tearful tale of loss to a teacher, who took it to the principal, and well… that was the end of that.  Kinda.

          Pinky swears were banned, Alan’s trapper keeper was confiscated, and Rocko gave back Jordan’s Game Boy.

          But all this really did was send the pinky swears underground.  Alan set up behind the gym instead of the lunch room, and continued passing judgement. He even got himself a secretary in little Marshall Goodly, who recorded the swears in his cramped but precise hand.

          It wasn’t until Jordan died that they stopped for good.

          The grown-ups called it a tragic accident, but the kids knew better: it was karma.  Jordan had broken his pinky swear and hadn’t paid the price demanded of him. So, instead, karma had extracted its own price.

          After that, no one ever made another pinky swear again.

          Each time a new class came into the school, the older kids would pass down the story.  The legend of the Pinky Swear grew in the telling, eventually morphing into a tale of Jordan the ghost child who would haunt you to death if you dared enter into Pinky Swear with someone.  Kids claimed to see Jordan lurking in the hallways of the school, or popping up in the mirror of the boys bathroom nearest the lunchroom, just waiting for someone to slip up.

          As they got older, the original Pinky Swear kids began to forget.  If they thought about it at all, they told themselves that the accident had really just been an accident.  That Jordan had broken a pinky swear was just coincidence.  It was tragic, sure, but nothing more.

          But stuff like that stays with you, even through the rationality of adulthood.

          So when Ronnie Mallard showed up on my doorstep and demanded the favor I owed her, I wasn’t about to say ‘no’.

            “Ronnie?” I said bewildered, staring at the now-grown woman I hadn’t seen in more than 20 years.  Ronnie had moved away before high school, but we had been best friends up until then.  We’d tried to keep in touch somewhat, but, as happens when you no longer see each other every day, eventually grew apart.  Of all the people I expected to find on my doorstep, Ronnie wouldn’t have even cracked the top ten.

           “Hey, Fi,” said Ronnie.  She looked stressed, her hair thrown into a messy bun and dark circles under her eyes. But she grinned at me with an old familiarity, and there was warmth in the way she used my nickname.  “It’s been an age, huh?”

           “Yeah,” I said with a laugh, “yeah it has.  You wanna come in?”  Ronnie shook her head.

           “Nah, can’t.  Thanks.”

           We stood awkwardly on my front porch, Ronnie shuffling her feet and looking around.

           “Nice place you got,” she said.

           I felt this was pretty generous on her part.  The house had been my grandparents’, and wasn’t in the best of shape. But it was mine, and suited my simple, mundane life.

           “Thanks,” I said, glancing at the peeling paint beside the door.  “You sure you don’t want to come in?”

           “Do you remember that pinky swear we made in middle school?” she asked abruptly.

           I froze.  I hadn’t thought about Pinky Swears in years, but as soon as she said it, the memory came flooding in, like it had been lurking at the back of my mind, just waiting for its chance to be recognized once more.

              It was lunchtime, and I opened my brown paper sack to discover that my mother, who was on one of her health kicks had packed carrots with my pb&j.  Mom was always on some crash diet or other.  Skinny as a rail, she still thought she needed to lose weight.  And if mom was on a diet, that meant the whole family had to be also because she “just needed some goddamn support, if that wasn’t too much to ask.”

           I hated carrots, especially the slimy baby carrots mom was always trying to force on me.  I looked around at my circle of friends and proposed a trade.  Almost anything would be better than the carrots.

           Ronnie, who had gotten the school lunch that day, looked down at her tray and offered her tater tots.

           “Done!” I said happily, already reaching to scoop them up.  Ronnie stopped me.

           “You’ll owe me,” she said.

           “Of course,” I said, without thought, “anything!”

           “Pinky swear,” Ronnie said.  This was near the height of the pinky swear phenomenon, before things got too crazy, but significant enough to warrant a little caution.

           “Sure,” I shrugged, like it was no big deal.  “What do you want?”

           Ronnie thought about it.

           “I don’t know yet,” she said.  “Just… a favor.  When I ask, you can’t say ‘no’.”

           That made me pause.  An open-ended pinky swear could be dangerous, and wasn’t to be entered into lightly. But Ronnie was my best friend. What could she ever ask that I wouldn’t give her anyway?

           “Done.”

           We linked pinkies and shook.  I took Ronnie’s tater tots while she got up to tell Alan, who recorded our pinky swear in his ledger.

             I laughed a bit uneasily now, and nudged the corner of the welcome mat with my toe.

           “I remember,” I said.  “That was crazy back then, wasn’t it?  Seemed perfectly normal at the time but kids… kids are weird I guess.  Is that why you’re here?” I asked, looking up at last.

           “Yeah,” she said, “I’m gonna need that favor you owe me.”

           I tried to laugh again, but her face was dead serious, so I turned the laugh into a cough and let it die.

           “Well…” I began, uncertain.  I took in her tired eyes once more, the lines of stress in her face.  Ronnie was in trouble and she needed a favor.  So what if we hadn’t seen each other in 20 years? There were some bonds that just never let go.  I decided right then, whatever it was, I was going to help her.  “Okay,” I said.  “Whatever you need.”

           Ronnie studied my face a moment, then nodded once.

           “Good.  Come.  I need to show you something.”  She turned and walked down the two steps off my porch toward the driveway where her car was parked.  I followed somewhat hesitantly.

           The house was the very last on the block, surrounded on three sides by nothing but forest.  The road ended at my driveway, and the house next to me had been empty for the last 2 years. Sometimes the isolation bothered me, most of the time I liked it.  Today, it felt slightly creepy.  Even the forest, which was never quiet, seemed too still, like it was waiting.

           Ronnie was standing by the trunk of her car.  When I joined her, she held out her keys.

           “Open it,” she said.

           I smiled uncertainly.  This was going to be some elaborate joke, right?  Ronnie had always been a prankster, a class clown.  But she never went too far.  Her pranks were never harmful or made someone the butt of the joke.  It’s why people had loved her in school.  It’s why I had loved her.

           I grinned with more confidence and took the keys, fitting the one Ronnie had singled out for me into the lock and swung open the trunk with gleeful expectation.

           I stared down at the open trunk and blinked.  The grin froze on my face.

           “Ronnie,” I said calmly.  “There’s a body in your trunk.”

           “Yeah,” Ronnie said.

           “A dead body,” I clarified, determined to put all the facts on the table.

           “Yeah,” she said again, this time with a little sigh of resignation.

           I studied her profile as she calmly contemplated the body.  After a moment, Ronnie turned and locked eyes with me.  We held each other’s gaze evenly for several heartbeats.

           “We’re gonna need a shovel.”